ICE holds people in disgusting conditions. Now it’s turning warehouses into camps | Moira Donegan

The Trump administration has bought warehouses across the US that could hold thousands. But resistance is growingThere is a vast building, reportedly the size of seven football fields, in , a suburb of Phoenix; ICE bought it for $70m. Another building, along the southern border in San Antonio, Texas, was valued at $37m; it’s 640,000 sq ft. In January, ICE bought a warehouse in , Pennsylvania, not far outside of Philadelphia, for $87.4m. In , outside Hagerstown, the cost of a facility on a nearly 54-acre plot was $102m.These are massive, industrial spaces, built for holding goods to be shipped elsewhere. Warehouses are drafty and difficult to heat, hard-floored and high-ceilinged, not meant for human habitation. But the Trump administration is aiming to convert them into vast detention camps for immigrants. Some of the buildings could house as many as at a time. The rapid slew of new warehouse purchases by deportation agencies brings to mind the words of the ICE director, , who told a conference last year that he wanted the effort to operate “like Amazon Prime, for human beings”.